Emma Roby was one of the Swan Lake dancers on Big Ballet (Picture: Channel 4)

Big Ballet (C4) built to a big finish as Wayne Sleep guided his plus-sized corps to an emotional performance of his version of Swan Lake.

The dancers, who didn’t fit the mould demanded by traditional ballet companies, clearly derived a massive boost in self-esteem from being involved in the production and it was hard not to be swept up in their emotional reaction at the final curtain.

However, a nagging doubt remained about what could have been a welcome boot up the tutu for ballet’s often criticised body fascism. Rather than lumping a load of big dancers together, surely a truly revolutionary approach would have been a Swan Lake that broke every kind of size and shape boundary?

Sleep’s maxim that ‘big, small, everybody deserves a chance to dance’ is certainly true. But better if that was all different sizes dancing together, not just with people of the same size. Big Ballet simply scaled everything up, rather than breaking that barrier down.